


Benediction; Absolution

by AidaRonan



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, i am at a loss for these danged tags, one person thinks the other might be dying, paul rovia deserves better, the other is not conscious to contradict this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: His boots crunch and slip across frost-ridden leaves, flashlight beams dancing through the woods, otherworldly and ethereal. Paul focuses on listening past his footsteps and the sticks cracking beneath his soles. He hears nothing.He tries to convince himself that’s a good sign. No noise means Daryl’s already killed whatever made him scream. He’s probably already skulking soundlessly toward the flashlight, ready to chastise Paul for the light and the racket he’s making in his haste. He’s probably okay.‘Probably’ feels like too big of a gamble for the man he loves.





	Benediction; Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> I actually started this story 900 years ago for that challenge to write the saddest Desus story I possibly could. I rediscovered it months ago when the challenge was so long over that I'd forgotten about it, and then I promptly was like... well screw however it was gonna end. 
> 
> And now I've made it fit the Paul Rovia Deserves Better challenge instead. So here ya go. *gestures to story* Ta-da!

Daryl's yell slices its way through skeleton trees. A single syllable spilling into the night, raking against bone like the bite of a winter wind.   
  
“Paul!”   
  
Daryl is the only one who calls him that. Tumbling through his lips, it's always seemed like more than a name. It’s an incantation, an invocation, a fresh honey comb dripping with sweet indulgence. It’s every kiss they’ve shared—brief hellos and goodbyes, long languid moments that seem to vibrate with something more vast than time itself. It’s every brush of skin, every huff of breath when they make love or fuck roughly in the backseat of an abandoned car.

Everything they are to one another, all contained in a single solitary syllable that may as well be “mine.”

Except now it’s something else entirely. Every quickening heartbeat, every slimy hand brushing across his coat, every chest-tightening moment of existential terror either of them have experienced since the new world rose from the graves of the old.

His boots crunch and slip across frost-ridden leaves, flashlight beams dancing through the woods, otherworldly and ethereal. Paul focuses on listening past his footsteps and the sticks cracking beneath his soles. He hears nothing.

He tries to convince himself that’s a good sign. No noise means Daryl’s already killed whatever made him scream. He’s probably already skulking soundlessly toward the flashlight, ready to chastise Paul for the light and the racket he’s making in his haste. He’s probably okay.

‘Probably’ feels like too big of a gamble for the man he loves.

“Daryl,” Paul calls, the sound of his own voice almost alarming in the night. No answer other than the solitary howl of a wolf somewhere far away. “Daryl!” he calls again, louder this time.

“Paul.” The reply is faint, feeble, unnerving. He can hear the struggle it takes to speak, and he knows the space between the beginning of his name and the end felt like miles for Daryl. Just like how the space between where he stands and the spot the sound originated feels like lightyears.

It’s a night of too much distance.

He follows the noise the best he can, hoping he won’t have to ask the man to speak again until they’re safe back in their temporary shelter. Daryl has survived so much. Paul knows about the nights lost in the woods near his home as a child, about the nights he wasn’t lost but chose to be anyway. He knows about the beatings, about the time he was speared by a buck on a hunting trip. Beyond that, they’ve both told each other stories of their time trudging through the ashes. A man who survived being impaled by his own arrow only to scale a gulley and crawl back home should be capable of surviving anything.

He hopes like hell that’s true. That whatever he finds, he finds Daryl hurt but still human. He can handle hurt. He doesn’t care if he has to tend to Daryl for weeks or months or the rest of his life as long as he gets to keep him.

The flashlight beam lands on blood before it lands on flesh. Neither of them are human though. The blood is putrid and so rotten the parts not diluted by frost look like oil. The flesh is gray and fragile. He moves the flashlight higher, finding a familiar black and orange arrow protruding from its forehead.

One. That’s one Daryl took out.

He shines the flashlight past the creature, finding a trail through the leaves to follow. Expecting a single pair of bootprints marring the frost, the evidence of several makes him pause. There were more walkers here. A lot of them. And Daryl fought like hell.

With an obvious trail, it’s easy to follow the bodies. He collects the occasional bolt along the way, but most of them were taken out at close range. The slits in their foreheads tell enough of a story. He just hopes the ending is a happy one.

There’s more blood on the frost, this time fresh and red. Another body, this one panting against a tree.

“Paul,” Daryl rasps, squinting into the beam from the flashlight. And then he slumps over onto the ground.

Paul’s second trek through the woods that night is a blur. He has Daryl slung over both his shoulders, and he jogs with him on his back, eager to get them both to safety and even more eager to reach their shelter before his body registers just how heavy Daryl actually is.

He knows it’s dangerous somewhere in the back of his mind. With him panting from exertion, Daryl could stop breathing and he’d never know it. He could re-open cloudy eyes, sink teeth into Paul’s throat, and it would all be over. Paul knows all of this, the thoughts making loops in his mind. But he refuses to acknowledge it.

Besides, if Daryl really is gone, then maybe that would be the ideal outcome anyway. If he takes Paul with him, then Paul never has to live without him. Never has to mourn such a profound loss.

Despite all his efforts to beat fatigue, his limbs ache by the time he reaches the clearing. Daryl’s not exactly light on any day, but now he feels like boulder. It’s through sheer will alone that Paul gets him inside the ramshackle cabin and onto the pile of blankets. He bars the door, though it wouldn't do much good if anyone or anything seriously tried to get inside.

That’s the reason Daryl was out in the first place. The small group of walkers knocking on the wall would have taken the whole place down given enough time. So they’d both slipped out into the dark, bolting in separate directions to draw them off. Apparently Daryl ran into more.

Paul chances turning the lantern on, hoping he won’t need it for long, because it probably leaks through every single crack in the walls like a beacon to any passing dead. But he needs to check Daryl over.

The large swath of red on one leg of Daryl’s jeans is a bad sign. The fact that some of it’s still fresh enough to glisten is an even worse one. 

Falling to his knees, Paul pulls out one of his knives and uses it to cut away the ropes around Daryl’s ankle. He tries to roll the pants leg up. When it’s too tight to do that without pulling the fabric against any injuries, he slices into the denim instead, cutting open a swath from ankle to knee and then prying it gently apart where it sticks to dry blood.

At first, there’s nothing but rust on unmarred skin. It mats a bit in Daryl’s leg hair, but there are no open wounds that he can see. It tricks the emotional side of his brain momentarily, and he sighs in relief before the patterns catch his eye. Trails disappear around the back of his leg. In his head, he presses rewind and watches the blood creep up and around. 

Begging some unnamed god not to take Daryl from him, Paul gently turns him over, crying out softly when he sees what’s waiting.

The back of Daryl’s calf is gnarled and broken, muscle and flesh all blended together in a way that they were never meant to be arranged. And he knows what it looks like, and he knows that if it is what it looks like, then it’s too late to stop it. Regret bites into him sharply. If he’d looked sooner, he might have been able to…

And Christ, he wants to claw all the skin off his own face and press it to that wound, like if he could just fix it, then he could somehow stop the infection from spreading, from killing, from putting some perverse sense of life back into the body he knows better than his own.

Clearing his throat against the emotions threatening to choke him to death, he does what he should do. He finds the cleanest rag they have between them and presses it against Daryl’s leg, applying pressure until the bleeding slows. Daryl squirms beneath him, even unconscious, and Paul focuses on how warm he still feels. He’s still alive.

He’s still goddamn alive.

When the bleeding finally stops, he sterilizes it to the best of his ability before wrapping it up. It’s not perfect, and he knows if Daryl makes it back to Hilltop with him in the daylight, he’ll need antibiotics and stitches; and _fuck_ , he tries not to dwell on that “if,” but it needles inside of him and tears everything he is apart.

“I love you,” he whispers, pushing the words out into the air and into Daryl. He says them again, breathing them quietly while he turns Daryl back over, propping his leg up. Hating himself or maybe just the whole situation in general, he digs rope out of Daryl’s pack and binds his wrists and ankles together before tucking him tightly into a blanket. He should gag him too, and he knows it, but he gets as far as getting the rag ready to stuff in his mouth, and he can’t do it.

He settles for stroking Daryl’s face instead, smoothing his hair back and memorizing every single feature he has both by sight and by touch. Just in case these are their last hours. Just in case the sun rises tomorrow to find Paul alone with nothing but the empty shell of a man he loved and the memories of laughter and kisses and passion that fucking burned within him like the molten core of the Earth.

He shifts to the lantern, turning the light as low as he can without plunging the room into darkness. He needs to see Daryl, needs to see that his chest is still rising and falling and rising and falling. As long as it doesn’t stop, then he’s still there. He settles one hand against his neck and feels Daryl’s pulse still thrumming beneath his fingers. He does his very best not to dwell on the fact that probably less than an hour ago, they were lying here, kissing and sliding hands into each other’s clothing.

They’d sworn at the walkers like frisky college kids being interrupted by a roommate. Not like two men living under the constant threat of death. It was an inconvenience to be dealt with so they could get back to each other. A pesky salesman or Jehovah’s Witness, not the specter of Death coming to knock, knock, knock.

Stroking Daryl’s face, all Paul can think is that he should’ve gone right instead of left. It would’ve been him instead. And Daryl would’ve had Rick and all the others to get him through it.

At least Paul will have Maggie if… _if_.

He runs his fingers along the side of Daryl’s face, traces his lips with his thumb. He twists dark hair between his fingers. It’s overdue for a wash—they both are, but maybe Paul won’t forget the days when it was soft as gossamer threading through his fingertips. Maybe he won’t forget the particular shade of blue peeking from between squinted eyelids or the way Daryl would smile easily, if still rarely, for him and him alone.

Maybe he won’t forget any of him.

By the time the first rays of light filter in between the cracks in the walls, Paul feels the long night in every single bone, muscle and nerve in his body. But Daryl’s still breathing and the steady thump, thump, thump of his pulse beats on beneath his skin.

Getting Daryl back to Hilltop proves even more difficult than getting him to the shelter. Paul does gag him this time, knowing that Daryl would curse him up and down if he found out Paul just let him bite him. Or that Paul even took the risk to begin with. He runs his hand under Daryl’s nostrils to make sure he can still breathe and checks again every time he rests, carrying him through the woods and wishing they hadn’t lost their car the day before.

Or that he could find another one.

The closest Paul gets is a wheelbarrow, but it’s something. He carefully arranges Daryl inside and keeps trudging on, jogging as much as he can physically stand. He knows they were only a few miles out. He can make it before lunch even. He just has to keep going.

It’s a little before eleven when Paul finally wheels Daryl up to the gate. He’s trembling and so tired he can barely stand, but he won’t listen when people try to pull him away from Daryl, muttering things about him getting some rest, saying that they’ll take it from there, and so on and so on. He slaps hands away when they get too close, pushing Daryl inside and onward. It’s only when Maggie gently pries his arms lose that he finally lets someone else take over, following behind her while she wheels his partner toward the medical trailer.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” And somehow saying that out loud rekindles the smallest ember of hope in him. He really doesn’t know. And even if the odds are a million to one, that's not nothing. And Daryl always cheats at cards.

Inside, Paul sits and watches in a daze. Dr. Carson has Maggie dig leather straps out of a cabinet, the two of them turning Daryl onto his side and binding him to the railings on one side of the bed. And Paul can’t see his face anymore, just the wide stretch of his shoulders and the makeshift bandage around his calf.

It looks even worse when the doctor unwraps it, the skin around it red and angry. Dr. Carson gently presses fingers along the edges, frowning. A thermometer comes next, quiet orders to Maggie to grab one of the few saline bags they have left. Carson rambles off medications with names that all blend together in Paul’s head. Everything feels like a waking nightmare, and all he wants to do is curl his body around the back of Daryl’s like he’s done so many times and just sleep, surrounded by the smell of him and his soft breaths.

He decides not to focus on the mishmash of torn flesh on Daryl’s leg. He settles for watching his back instead, the subtle shifts that tell him Daryl's still in there, that he hasn't been replaced by something else. Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive. It’s a mantra in his head, maybe even a prayer.

“Jesus,” Maggie says firmly, the tone of her voice telling him she’s called his name more than once already. He looks up, and the fluorescent lights above her spread around her frame, blurring out around her. He blinks and raises his eyebrows, the closest thing to a response he can manage.

“What’s your blood type?”

“O Positive.” He knows because the little blood donor card in his wallet used to haunt him. He’d given one time before he’d spent his first night with another man. And then he’d never been able to give again. Not even when the outbreak started and the news begged people to give blood.

Especially not then.

But those rules don’t matter anymore. Maggie drags him up off the chair and moves him closer to Daryl. He stands, leaning against the wall.

There’s a needle, a pinprick and a conversation that Paul hears none of. Another needle and tubes, Maggie yelling out the door for someone to bring some fruit. Dr. Carson has him squeeze a balled up towel. Maggie forces him to eat apple slices. Mechanically following her orders, he watches blood flow out of him and through the tube he knows leads to Daryl.

Stay alive.

“That’s enough,” Carson finally says from somewhere behind Maggie’s back.

“He can have more.” He can have everything.

But Maggie’s already pressing a cotton ball against his inner elbow and grabbing one of his hands to replace her fingertips with his own.

“Hold that for a minute and then finish those apples.”

Paul does as instructed, moving back to his chair when he’s done. Daryl’s back keeps rising and falling. Carson and Maggie hide his view of the gnarled wound, working together to get Daryl as close to better as they can. At several points during the afternoon, Paul's pretty sure he falls asleep with his eyes open. He loses time again and again. 

Finally Carson steps back, gloves bloody. Maggie steps back too, already peeling latex off her fingertips. A line of black stitches runs down the back of Daryl’s leg, the skin pulled together messily. The scar's gonna be nasty, but at least it's done.

“I wish my brother...” Carson trails off. “He was the surgeon.”

“You did your best.” Maggie claps him on the shoulder and then turns on Paul.

“You should rest, Jesus. We’ve done all we can for him. You have.” The corners of her lips go up in something that isn’t exactly a smile. Sympathy, maybe.

Paul shakes his head.

“No.”

“He w-”

“No,” he says, firmly and with no room for argument. It’s probably the coldest he’s ever spoken to Maggie, but he won’t leave him. If Daryl drew his last breath while Paul was taking a fucking nap in his trailer, the guilt would swallow him alive.

And fuck, if someone else was the one to… Paul eyes one of his own daggers, then thinks about the buck knife still hanging from Daryl’s hip. His brain starts to imagine exactly how he’d do it before he can stop himself, and he has to bite his own tongue to force the images away. He swallows back the nausea. 

“Okay.” Maggie leaves the trailer and he thinks that’s probably the end of it until she comes back with a blanket and a pillow, setting both gently in his lap. It’s an overwhelmingly kind gesture that he can’t quite find the energy to appreciate. By the time he thinks he could maybe choke out a thank you, Maggie’s already gone.

In a chair a few feet away, Dr. Carson sits and leans his head back against the wall, cradled on another pillow courtesy of Maggie. Paul wants to do the same, he really does. Instead he stands up, walking over to the bed now that the hive of activity has quieted.

Gently, he lays his hand against Daryl’s back. He smoothes his hair next, sweeping loose tendrils off his forehead before turning his hand over and pressing the backs of his fingers against Daryl’s skin.

He’s warm, but not abnormally so.

No fever.

That has to mean something.

Eventually, Paul does fall asleep, back in his chair with his head lolling on the wall.

A couple hours later, Daryl wakes up violently, bringing both Paul and the doctor out of sleep with him. He’s thrashing on the bed, unable to move because of the bindings.

Words come rapidly, slurring together in a rapid fire stream. He says Paul's name first, swears a streak, asks where the fuck he is, why he's tied up. 

"Where the hell's Paul? If you laid a damn hand on him, a finger, I-"

“Daryl,” Paul says, and he stills instantly. “I’m right here.”

“Can’t see you,” Daryl says. “Why am I- shit." Quiet, a deep breath. "I get bit?”

It doesn’t sound as casual as Daryl tries to make it sound.

“I don’t know,” Paul says, swallowing thickly. “The back of your leg. Do you remember what happened?”

Paul's pulse speeds up, hammering against his throat. Please no. Please, please, please. 

“Fell,” Daryl says. “Tripped backwards over a log. Sharp as hell broken branch ripped it right the hell open. Hurt like a sumbitch.”

And just like that, all of Paul’s fears and worries drain right out of him. He exhales relief so sharply that he almost collapses with it. Instead he reaches for the bindings on Daryl’s wrists, deftly unbuckling them. Dr. Carson hesitates briefly before unbinding Daryl's ankles, not saying a word when Paul starts touching him everywhere he can reach.

“I thought...” He doesn’t cry. Later, he might. He might fucking fall apart from the whirlwind of it all. But right now, he doesn’t.

“You should think,” Daryl says. “Thinkin’s how we stay alive.”

Paul doesn’t know what to say to that. Instead, there’s the loud scraping sound of him going for the chair and dragging it right up against the hospital bed. He sits and lays his head on Daryl’s stomach.

“Not sure I’d want to if you weren’t,” he says quietly, knowing full well Daryl will probably chew him out for it either now or later. But it’s the truth even if it’s ugly. Even if he knows in the end, he'd probably choose to stick around and protect the people Daryl loves most. 

“Yeah,” Daryl says, laying his hand across the back of Paul's neck. “Yeah, I know.”

Dr. Carson clears his throat.

“I’m gonna go let Maggie know you’re awake,” he says. “I’ll need to check your vitals when I get back.”

Paul doesn’t see Daryl jerk a nod at him, but he knows him better than he knows himself. Enough to know that it’s exactly what he does.

“Can you do me a favor?” Paul asks, forehead still pressed into Daryl’s stomach. He smells like sweat and iron and earth. And home. 

“Nothin I wouldn’t do for you,” Daryl says.

“Next time, can you mention that your wound isn’t a bite _before_ you pass out from blood loss?”

Daryl huffs.

“Asshole,” he says. Then quietly, “Sorry I scared you.”

“I’ll get over it.” Paul lifts up and takes Daryl’s hand, brushing over his knuckles with his thumb and then his lips. “Really, I’m lucky to have someone I care about enough to be that terrified.”

Daryl rolls his hand over and gives a weak squeeze.

“Me too.”   
  
Then quiet, peaceful and companionable. Paul presses his fingers into the pulse point on Daryl's neck and closes his eyes, resting his head on the edge of the mattress.   
  
They stay like that until Maggie yanks open the door, immediately throwing her arms over Daryl and squeezing him tight. She threatens to kill him if he ever scares them like that again.   
  
"Marco's making a casserole," she says. "I'll bring you some if Dr. Carson says it's okay for you to eat."   
  
The doctor does, and he leaves Paul and Daryl alone to eat dinner in the medical trailer, Daryl propped up on pillows so he doesn’t get corn all over the bed.

“You know, last time I was in Alexandria,” Daryl says, “Gabriel cornered me. Started talkin some Bible nonsense about the Lord and pure love, and I figured he was gonna give me the 'All Gays Go to Hell' speech.”

“Did he?”

“Nope. Told me when we were ready, he’d be happy to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Marry us.” Daryl’s poking at his casserole now, staring at it like it holds some ancient secret of the universe. Or a way to avoid looking at Paul when his neck is turning that particular shade of pink.

Paul pokes at his own plate. He never thought… Shit, it wasn't legal when the world fell apart, not where he lived anyway. He never thought he’d even get the chance.

“Are you asking?” Paul finally manages. Because as well as he knows Daryl, he still surprises him all the time too. That of the two of them, Daryl would be the one to breach the idea of forever, well that's a bit of a surprise. Not that he's complaining. 

“Think I am. Guess I never-” A deep breath. “Never thought I’d even have this, way I grew up.” He motions between them with his fork. “I could’ve died, even if it wasn’t a bite. Could’ve bled out. Could’ve gotten ambushed while you were tryin to get me home. Walkers or someone else.”

Paul swallows, something in his chest clenching in a painfully wonderful way.

“Just doesn't seem like we should waste any damn time, not when we know,” Daryl finishes, finally looking at him, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “You d-”

“Of course I know,” Paul interrupts. His next words come out fiercely, like it’s the first time he’s ever said them even though he's said them more than he can count. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” No hesitation. His eyes say just how much.

“I do feel like you should be able to stand up though,” Paul says, “you know, without passing out at the altar.”

“Fuck you,” Daryl says, but he’s grinning.

“When you make it out bed though, you're stuck with me,” Paul says. “Forever.”

“I’ll take you,” Daryl says. “For as long as we’ve got.”

They tell Maggie first, when she comes in to collect their empty plates and see if they need anything else.

Two days later, one of the blacksmiths approaches Paul and hands him a pair of rings he never requested.

Paul slips them into his pocket with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I thrive only on constant validation and the bitter spite I feel towards capitalist greed, so please comment. 
> 
> I'm pretty Stucky heavy these days, but feel free to come bother me on [The Tumblr](http://bisexualstarbucky.tumblr.com).


End file.
